CNN

The long metal table in the University of Michigan biomedical engineering lab is covered by a film of white dust. Scattered across the table are opaque-colored objects shaped like ears, noses, vertebrae, and jawbones – all made from biological material.

The New Yorker

The exponents of 3-D printing contend that the technology is making manufacturing more democratic; the things we are choosing to print are becoming ever more personal and intimate. This appears to be even more true in medicine: increasingly, what we are printing is ourselves.

Today

When 18-month-old Kaiba Gionfriddo was born, his family learned that his trachea was flattened, making it impossible to breathe. Engineers used a 3-D printer to make a revolutionary custom splint that holds his windpipe open, enabling him to take his first full breath. NBC’s Kevin Tibbles reports

Huffington Post

When Kaiba Gionfriddo was just a few months old, a 3D-printed device saved his life. Thanks to 3D printing, a technology that produces objects of any shape, including medical devices highly customized for patients, from a computer model, these kinds of stories are becoming increasingly common. In order to keep up, the FDA is now looking at how it might evaluate medical devices made using 3D printers.

USA Today

Researchers at the University of Michigan used a 3-D printer to build a tiny splint-like implant that saved a baby boy with life-threatening breathing problems. With the implant’s success, custom-designing medical devices on a 3-D printer may become common.

NPR

A 3-D printer is being credited with helping to save an Ohio baby’s life, after doctors “printed” a tube to support a weak airway that caused him to stop breathing. The innovative procedure has allowed Kaiba Gionfriddo, of Youngstown, Ohio, to stay off a ventilator for more than a year.

TIME

If you think 3D printing’s overhyped with all this talk of plastic guns and strange, spider-like houses, you clearly haven’t seen this: a tiny airway splint created using a 3D printer that saved a three-month-old’s life.

Nature World News

Kaiba Gionfriddo, a 20-month-old boy, has become the first person in the world to receive an airway splint made using a 3-D printer. The boy had a collapsed bronchus that was disrupting the airflow to his lungs, making him unable to breathe.

Gizmodo

When Kaiba Gionfriddo was born, his parents never expected to have to look on, helpless, as his windpipe collapsed daily and stopped him from breathing. They were desperate—so when a team of researchers suggested that a 3D printercould help, they leapt at the chance.

Popular Mechanics

These brilliant engineers, designers, and dreamers captured our imagination by creating swarms of smart rescue robots, cars that drive themselves, and a rugged rover that could change the way we think about exploring the Red Planet.